The period of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) promotion campaign (marked with #EUSBSRBetterTogether) has been an exciting time for Baltic TRAM, a project which is part of the Baltic Science Link flagship of the Policy Area Innovation.

Made of Courage is a short video series produced by the PA Bioeconomy. The series consists of five videos telling stories of people driving the development of the bioeconomy in the Baltic Sea Region. It celebrates entrepreneurial spirit, disruptive innovation and those who challenge the use of fossil and artificial resources by creating viable options that already work.

So far, four EU macro-regional strategies have been adopted. They cover different parts of Europe, but they are all based on the same principles and ideas, and often deal with similar problems and challenges. Thus, exchange across the regions is important and fruitful, as the two workshops “Message in a bottle: communication across macro-regional strategies” and a joint kick-off meeting to promote the role of social policies in the macro-regional context prove. The workshops were organised in September by Interact Programme.

The youth is important. The youth is our future. The youth wants to be heard. And involved. These statements are common slogans at various International forums and macro-regional gatherings. But often they are not more than that.

Routes4U project organized its first meeting for the EUSBSR in Oslo, Norway on September 6-7 2018. The meeting gathered together actors from almost all of the Baltic Sea region countries, and based on the discussions was an appreciated and much needed opportunity to exchange ideas and share experiences.

Most of us have probably thought about the question in the title. For this reason, "Let’s communicate!" project wanted to address this particular question in one of the seminars at the EUSBSR Annual Forum. The seminar highlighted some common challenges stakeholders had identified in a survey conducted by the project and aimed at showing through concrete examples that challenges can be solved. In addition, the seminar was an opportunity to plan the communications of the upcoming 10th Anniversary of the EUSBSR.

I had a great privilege to travel to sunny Slovenia last month to take part in “EU Macroregional Strategies Conference on Media and Communication – Know Thy Neighbour”. The event was about exchanging experiences, learning from good practices and discussing how to improve the visibility of the EU macro-regional strategies (MRS). Participants were representatives of media, journalists, communication experts, academia and interested stakeholders. Can you imagine that this was the first time that communication people from all four macro-regional strategies met to discuss their work!

The story of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region began in 2009. So far it has been a story of many successes and opportunities: projects and processes that have implemented the Action Plan of the Strategy have brought real change to the Baltic Sea Region.